


Journey of a Thousand Miles

by theleaveswant



Category: Misfits
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Consent, Gen, In Public, Invisibility, Kink Culture, Loneliness, Masturbation, Perversion, Season/Series 01, Sexual Fantasy, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-23
Updated: 2012-04-23
Packaged: 2017-11-04 05:11:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theleaveswant/pseuds/theleaveswant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon imagines touching himself while invisible in public places and thinks about what it means to be a pervert</p>
            </blockquote>





	Journey of a Thousand Miles

**Author's Note:**

> Written Summer 2011 for Kink Bingo prompt "in public". Contains fantasized non-consensual voyeurism and reclamation of kink-shaming language. Set after second episode of first series, no specific spoilers past that point.

“Oi, pervert!”

Simon looks up from his computer screen at the sound of shouting from outside. He slips off his headphones and stands up from his keyboard, leaning over his desk to look out the window at the estate below. It's just some kids fighting, running around trying to shove handfuls of crisps under each others' clothes. Of course they're not talking to him. He sits down again and resumes his research.

He's still having poor luck finding practical resources for dealing with the spontaneous acquisition of superpowers in general or of unreliable invisibility in particular, and his video of the weird storm is attracting as abysmal a rate of web traffic as all the others he's posted to date, not counting that time he'd tried adding false keywords promising celebrities in compromising positions and was promptly bombarded with semi-coherent expressions of disappointment and rage.

His other searches are much more fruitful. Contrary to Nathan's allegations concerning his ISP, he'd never really gone looking before. He knew there was something out there—had to be or, uncreative as they are, the bullies would have no names to call him (pervert arse-licker piss-drinker spank-demon freak), and how could someone as immersed in the streams of popular culture that he was fail to pick up _some_ kind of ideas about sex and the especially taboo? But he'd had no sense of the depth and breadth of the territory this line of inquiry would lead him to. Turns out there are other names out there, words he's never heard before or not in this context: positive, self-applied words. There are people who believe that the desires he has, and many others he's been accused of having but never really felt, are fine, acceptable, even praiseworthy. There are people who'd like to join in. 

He stands up again, peering out the window, watching miniature people crossing the square at various paces on unknown business. He imagines himself among them, standing right in the centre of the flow, unnoticed. His mind slips back to the locker room, watching Kelly and Alisha change and listening to their conversation when they didn't know he was there. He feels a sort of uncomfortable crawling on the back of his neck thinking about it, as if there's someone behind him now, judging him. His palms feel clammy and his pulse quickens, almost like he's about to slip out of view again. He likes the bold thrill of getting away with something, of acting without permission, but at the same time he feels ashamed. They didn't invite him to do that. They didn't consent. Even so, he can't help getting excited remembering details: Kelly's delicate tattoo, the smell of Alisha's skin under her perfume. He wonders what would have happened if he'd touched them. He wonders what would have happened if he'd asked—not really, it's a mad, stupid idea, but he's not hurting anyone by imagining.

He thinks about how it would have been different if they'd been someplace public, where being watched would be less intrusive, or at least less unexpected. His mind slips sideways to Nathan's mum's boyfriend, naked in the carpark, and, pushing aside a flush of pride that his werewolf hypothesis was closest to right after all, he imagines that the naked man really was out there committing acts of indecency. Would it be morally better if Simon did it, invisibly, so there was no risk of someone catching him and being scarred by it, or is the violation of trust, the corruption of a comparatively safe space, still the same?

Everybody already thinks he's a pervert anyway, he thinks, and nobody cares that he hasn't really done anything to earn it. If thoughts alone, or the fact that he's never fit in, always been awkward and too intense, are enough to condemn him, then what has he got to lose by taking action? As long as he doesn't hurt anybody . . .

His hands reach for his trousers as his mind stretches for the tarmac, putting him back in the middle of the human anthill. As he gropes his prick through his underwear he imagines he can feel the weak sunlight on his face, and breezes of air disturbed by bodies bustling past. He can see people his age and younger laughing and chatting in pairs or groups, pensioners with shopping trolleys, kids—he frowns and imagines himself somewhere else, somewhere less innocent. 

He pictures himself in a club, caught in the sardine grind of a packed dance floor, or pressed up against a wall lining the tight corridor to the lavs so that everyone coming or going has to brush past him on their way. He can almost smell it, stale lager and sick and all the natural and synthetic olfactory smear of young humans in rut. He blushes and fumbles for the tube of moisturizer hidden in his bottom desk drawer, squeezing his eyes tightly shut as he pours out a cold palmful and shoves his hand into his pants.

He pumps in time to an inaudible beat, the carnal throb of the club like the heart of a panicking whale. He jacks off to a parade of girls in short skirts and shiny earrings, hipsters and scene kids and red-blooded blokes in polos who'd beat the crap out of him if they knew he was there but they don't, none of them do. Simon is invisible; he can do anything. He imagines spilling onto them, flicking beads of cum that they won't know the source of onto their expensive clothes, and his balls tighten in anticipation at the thought. The idea that tips him over the edge for real, though, is that some reveller, caught across the arm with a rope of his spunk, might pause and turn towards him, eyes scanning ineffectually and a hand probing tentatively at the air. “Simon?” this person will say, and Simon will shrink back, away from those questing fingers and into the blindly thrusting crowd.

“You pervert,” this person will say, voice warm with affection, and Simon will feel less alone.


End file.
